Guild Wars 2

I have seen some threads about Unidentified Gear introduced in PoF and so far I don’t like the new Unidentified Gear. But one thing that will help me (and I think other players) decide how bad it is, to understand what reward the Unidentified Gear replaces.

1. Is Unidentified Gear a new reward in addition to what we already get? (unlikely imo)

2. Does Unidentified Gear only replace greens that I would have received anyway? Greens from where?

3. Does Unidentified Gear replace ANY reward that I would have received anyway? Even if that reward could have been a rare, exotic, or even a precursor?

I doubt that a player can answer this question unless it is someone like that_shaman. We’ll see if a developer wants to be open about this new feature and help us to understand it.

Looks to me like they’re trying to “save us inventory space” but it’s really just a gold sink. I for one think this is a bad decision because it’ll just irritate people.

I like the Unid gear. I certainly receive a boatload of Rares, and a few Exotics. Selling one Rare covered the cost of 15 or more identifications. I also received regular blues and greens, etc. from mobs. It seemed most of the Unid gear was from event rewards (chest on side of screen).

Do remember, Magic Find affects Unid gear identification.

People act like gold sinks are going to make them go broke, as if they don’t do WB trains and SW etc. etc. and have gold come out of their rear. Oh no 3 silver or something, how will I afford it.

It appears to replace any gear drop from that mob. Doesn’t matter if it’s white or exotic.

SmirkDog.3160:

People act like gold sinks are going to make them go broke, as if they don’t do WB trains and SW etc. etc. and have gold come out of their rear. Oh no 3 silver or something, how will I afford it.

Most players don’t do trains or anything else to farm gold. They get on and just do the current content.

Still, it’s pretty hard to not have enough money for general gold sinks. Those things are like waypoints, trading post fees, salvage kits, etc.

If you can’t even afford those, you’re clearly doing something wrong. Do the daily achievements or something. Quite trying to cling to every copper like the game is stealing it from you or something.

It seems to replace some equipment drops, but I did get normal items from mobs so it doesn’t replace all of them.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I like the Unid gear. I certainly receive a boatload of Rares, and a few Exotics. Selling one Rare covered the cost of 15 or more identifications. I also received regular blues and greens, etc. from mobs. It seemed most of the Unid gear was from event rewards (chest on side of screen).

Do remember, Magic Find affects Unid gear identification.

Yes but Magic Find also affects regular loot drops and those are “identified” for free as soon as they drop. Magic Find can also affect loot bags like some of the ones added to HoT and opening those is free and the resulting loot is “identified” as soon as you do so. So a new system is not required for Magic Find to work here.

The real problem with loot in HoT, IMHO, was that it dropped far too many different types of loot containers, recovered equipment chests, vined caches, mushroom caches, mordrem caches, champ bags (that didn’t always stack despite having the same name), and there were bags contained within bags.

They could have solved that problem by simply making sure that all the expansion maps dropped the same kind of loot bag, affected by Magic Find and by making sure that loot bag has a chance to drop unstable salvageable materials as well as equipment of all rarities.

Instead they’ve come up with an inconvenient (only at completed heart vendor) and quite expensive service (it often costs more than the resulting item is actually worth) that we never needed before in order to save some bag space.

It all looks like a bad deal to me and ArenaNet have given no information that makes me think otherwise.

In PoF preview UnID Gear replaced SOME gear drops. You still got green and yellow gear too. I am not sure if it replaced event rewards, drops from monsters or randomly everything.

UnID Gear is not worth to identify, just like it is not worth to throw stuff into Mystic Toilet. Paying for identification will always lose you gold. That is also why it is green rarity and will be salvaged auto when using auto-salvage command.

From the hundreds of UnID Gears I identified during the preview I got 0 exotics, and only rares specific to the PoF area.

To me, if the purpose of UnID gear was only to save bag space, then there wouldn’t be any cost to ID the gear, and you wouldn’t have to complete a heart to do it. There is clearly other motivation behind the UnID system. Perhaps somebody on the design team thought it would be a way to add some interest to the game? If so, I think they were severely mistaken.

When I see things tied to repeatable hearts, I think that it’s a way to try to get people to keep coming back to the zone and stay there for a while; once a zone has lost its novelty, these kinds of mechanics can serve to bring people back. And if that’s the case, then having rewards based on “time in the zone” would be a much better way to go about it rather than to introduce “busy work” necessary to get things gated behind repeatable hearts. After doing them several hundred times, they get to be so boring, even the rewards you can get from them don’t make it worth the bother to do them. And WHY WHY WHY do we have to re-discover their locations after every reset?

Just my opinion. I’m sure there are many differing points of view.

Archranis.2375:

To me, if the purpose of UnID gear was only to save bag space, then there wouldn’t be any cost to ID the gear, and you wouldn’t have to complete a heart to do it. There is clearly other motivation behind the UnID system. Perhaps somebody on the design team thought it would be a way to add some interest to the game? If so, I think they were severely mistaken.

I can pretty much guarantee that UnID gear was not created to save us bag space. Anet sells bag space…

I do think that it might have been created to answer the complaints about too many greens & blues, and yes the identifying is a gimmick. I also don’t like the heart + cost issue and it seems from reports that you don’t get much for your effort / $.

But if people want to gamble, that’s their business. I just want to know if I’m losing anything with this new “feature”.

SmirkDog.3160:

People act like gold sinks are going to make them go broke, as if they don’t do WB trains and SW etc. etc. and have gold come out of their rear. Oh no 3 silver or something, how will I afford it.

That is a pretty selfish way to look upon the problem. Just because you play this way doesn’t mean everybody else does.

I know enough people who do not do farm trains etc., because it’s repetitive, boring content (if you can call it that to begin with). For instance, I have a RL friend who is a casual player, for whom a silver coin does have value — and gold sinks make him play the game even less.

Djinn.9245:

Archranis.2375:

To me, if the purpose of UnID gear was only to save bag space, then there wouldn’t be any cost to ID the gear, and you wouldn’t have to complete a heart to do it. There is clearly other motivation behind the UnID system. Perhaps somebody on the design team thought it would be a way to add some interest to the game? If so, I think they were severely mistaken.

I can pretty much guarantee that UnID gear was not created to save us bag space. Anet sells bag space…

I do think that it might have been created to answer the complaints about too many greens & blues, and yes the identifying is a gimmick. I also don’t like the heart + cost issue and it seems from reports that you don’t get much for your effort / $.

But if people want to gamble, that’s their business. I just want to know if I’m losing anything with this new “feature”.

It does, however, save bag space, how can you not see that? If you have 160 slots of inventory, you can store 40,000 of these items before you need to salvage or see the NPC.

This is exactly the same as GW1, “7 unid, 5k!” take the gamble for better loot or salvage or materials or sell on the TP.

It’s not going to “replace” anything — it is part of the reward. It allows people with low magic find to sell directly to people with high MF and earn more, for less effort.

Whether it’s “better” for the game (or for each of us individually) remains to be seen. There’s clearly too little data available, especially since we don’t know yet if ANet is using legit or fake drop rates (they might want to stymie speculation).

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It’s not going to “replace” anything — it is part of the reward.

Part of what reward? That is what I’m trying to find out. Currently if I get blues, greens, rares, & the occasional exotic, I know exactly how I handle those and what I get from those rewards. I am trying to figure out how getting UnID Gear changes my reward (see the thread title).

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It allows people with low magic find to sell directly to people with high MF and earn more, for less effort.

Does it? Where did you find this information? Especially about earning more for less effort?

Djinn.9245:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It’s not going to “replace” anything — it is part of the reward.

Part of what reward? That is what I’m trying to find out. Currently if I get blues, greens, rares, & the occasional exotic, I know exactly how I handle those and what I get from those rewards. I am trying to figure out how getting UnID Gear changes my reward (see the thread title).

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It allows people with low magic find to sell directly to people with high MF and earn more, for less effort.

Does it? Where did you find this information? Especially about earning more for less effort?

The assumption seems to be that people will buy these on the TP, then pay to identify them in the hopes of getting lucky. They may but it also may not be worth their money.

Obviously it’s all up in the air at the moment, we don’t know what kind of new material sinks the expansion will introduce but at current market prices and from the little I’ve seen it seems to be a lot more profitable to salvage the unidentified loot and sell the materials rather than pay to identify them (identifying them mostly gives blues and greens worth less than the cost of identifying them) and then salvage them. If you add in the cost of buying them on the TP before identifying them then it’s a lot less attractive.

You may get lucky, of course, assuming precursors and whatnot can drop.

Djinn.9245:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It’s not going to “replace” anything — it is part of the reward.

Part of what reward? That is what I’m trying to find out. Currently if I get blues, greens, rares, & the occasional exotic, I know exactly how I handle those and what I get from those rewards. I am trying to figure out how getting UnID Gear changes my reward (see the thread title).

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It allows people with low magic find to sell directly to people with high MF and earn more, for less effort.

Does it? Where did you find this information? Especially about earning more for less effort?

If you really want the information, it’s out there. There are people who ran controlled tests with a bunch of these, some with high MF, some with low. People with high MF will get better stuff, the non-ID will be tradeable via the TP (so no waiting around Kamadan).

Since they are tradeable, those with low-MF have the opportunity to sell for coin, without identifying, without salvaging, without choosing prices — that’s money for less effort. It will be “more” because those with high MF will be willing to pay a premium so they can take advantage of the higher MF.

My point about rewards is that PoF doesn’t exist now. When it does, the rewards it has will be its rewards. ANet doesn’t balance rewards by trying to ensure everyone gets the same blues & greens; they try to make sure that, overall, people have the same opportunities, that there’s some element of chance to spice things up. UnID gear doesn’t change that, although I’m sure it will change the details of how it happens.

In short, stop trying to shoehorn the new system into the old one. Look at the new system as, well, a new system. And do what you need… to make it work for you (just as you figured out how to make the old system work for you).

This is a step back from even GW1 where we at least we knew the rarity of the item that was unid’d. Does anyone ever like systems like this that are arbitrarily gold sinks?

To answer your question, it’s a gold sink and a bad one.

Advice to ArenaNet: if the system you are implementing is not as friendly as the mechanic in your game a decade ago, probably don’t implement that system.

As several have said, it is both space saving and a gold sink. The unidentified item could be basic garbage or a precursor…you won’t know until it’s ID’d. But, taking my example of over 5,000 hours played and no precursor, if I start ID’ing all that gear (hoping to finally get one), I just lose money, cause the items are barely worth more than the cost of ID’ing.

Here is something to note: it is silly for loot to be one way in the expansion and different in the core game. Which means, if this is the route they are going, they will be changing core Tyria’s loot to be on the same system. All of the named exotics will increase in price tenfold.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Djinn.9245:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It’s not going to “replace” anything — it is part of the reward.

Part of what reward? That is what I’m trying to find out. Currently if I get blues, greens, rares, & the occasional exotic, I know exactly how I handle those and what I get from those rewards. I am trying to figure out how getting UnID Gear changes my reward (see the thread title).

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It allows people with low magic find to sell directly to people with high MF and earn more, for less effort.

Does it? Where did you find this information? Especially about earning more for less effort?

If you really want the information, it’s out there. There are people who ran controlled tests with a bunch of these, some with high MF, some with low. People with high MF will get better stuff, the non-ID will be tradeable via the TP (so no waiting around Kamadan).

Since they are tradeable, those with low-MF have the opportunity to sell for coin, without identifying, without salvaging, without choosing prices — that’s money for less effort. It will be “more” because those with high MF will be willing to pay a premium so they can take advantage of the higher MF.

My point about rewards is that PoF doesn’t exist now. When it does, the rewards it has will be its rewards. ANet doesn’t balance rewards by trying to ensure everyone gets the same blues & greens; they try to make sure that, overall, people have the same opportunities, that there’s some element of chance to spice things up. UnID gear doesn’t change that, although I’m sure it will change the details of how it happens.

In short, stop trying to shoehorn the new system into the old one. Look at the new system as, well, a new system. And do what you need… to make it work for you (just as you figured out how to make the old system work for you).

So there isn’t an official source or any centralized source of research numbers. That’s what I was asking.

And I’m not sure why you are accusing me of trying to shoehorn anything. All I’ve done is say I don’t like what I see so far and ask for more information. Stop putting words into my mouth.

Iason Evan.3806:

This is a step back from even GW1 where we at least we knew the rarity of the item that was unid’d. Does anyone ever like systems like this that are arbitrarily gold sinks?

To answer your question, it’s a gold sink and a bad one.

Advice to ArenaNet: if the system you are implementing is not as friendly as the mechanic in your game a decade ago, probably don’t implement that system.

Good point.

Djinn.9245:

Iason Evan.3806:

This is a step back from even GW1 where we at least we knew the rarity of the item that was unid’d. Does anyone ever like systems like this that are arbitrarily gold sinks?

To answer your question, it’s a gold sink and a bad one.

Advice to ArenaNet: if the system you are implementing is not as friendly as the mechanic in your game a decade ago, probably don’t implement that system.

Good point.

Very good advice too. The starting point of this new system is far too vague for me. It’s a green item that may turn into just about anything if I spend… the approximate cost of a green item. So I can give you money to get back an item that might be worth a lot less than what I’ve paid you? Or may (rarely) be worth a lot more?

That’s just gambling. I don’t really like gambling.

I bet there will be infinite UnID kit in itemshop.

Rong.5470:

I bet there will be infinite UnID kit in itemshop.

I would bet on it.

Ubi.4136:

As several have said, it is both space saving and a gold sink. The unidentified item could be basic garbage or a precursor…you won’t know until it’s ID’d. But, taking my example of over 5,000 hours played and no precursor, if I start ID’ing all that gear (hoping to finally get one), I just lose money, cause the items are barely worth more than the cost of ID’ing.

Here is something to note: it is silly for loot to be one way in the expansion and different in the core game. Which means, if this is the route they are going, they will be changing core Tyria’s loot to be on the same system. All of the named exotics will increase in price tenfold.

This is not even true, you will always net gain when id gears with high MF, rare drop is quite common not mentioning exotics.

It replaces having to stop after every semi-large event to salvage your full inventory and it’s a fantastic idea. I really do not understand the whining I’m seeing. Sure it has a few flaws that can be fixed but overall it’s a wonderful addition.

To answer the OP’s question, we do not yet know how much weight the UNID’d items enjoy on the drop tables. There is too little data.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It’s not going to “replace” anything — it is part of the reward. It allows people with low magic find to sell directly to people with high MF and earn more, for less effort.

Wrong. There is always an opportunity cost on drop tables in the form of what could have dropped instead.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Whether it’s “better” for the game (or for each of us individually) remains to be seen. There’s clearly too little data available, especially since we don’t know yet if ANet is using legit or fake drop rates (they might want to stymie speculation).

Right. However, at this point we can say that whether this is better or worse is likely to depend on whether we choose to know what’s inside. If we choose to ID, the new system is less convenient and more expensive. That’s indisputable. Whether we choose to ID or not, we could end up with more value than if we made the other choice. We can also know the downsides of the choice. If we choose to ID, we stand a chance to lose money. If we choose not to, we will never know what we might have gotten. It’s likely that the value to ANet of the system as a gold sink is the psychological impetus of the latter.

warbignime.4610:

Ubi.4136:

As several have said, it is both space saving and a gold sink. The unidentified item could be basic garbage or a precursor…you won’t know until it’s ID’d. But, taking my example of over 5,000 hours played and no precursor, if I start ID’ing all that gear (hoping to finally get one), I just lose money, cause the items are barely worth more than the cost of ID’ing.

Here is something to note: it is silly for loot to be one way in the expansion and different in the core game. Which means, if this is the route they are going, they will be changing core Tyria’s loot to be on the same system. All of the named exotics will increase in price tenfold.

This is not even true, you will always net gain when id gears with high MF, rare drop is quite common not mentioning exotics.

Please link the stats that you draw this conclusion from. I haven’t seen any conclusive evidence for “you will always net gain”.

I would say its the new bag of masterful gear.

You sometimes got rares out of those green bags aswell.

Djinn.9245:

warbignime.4610:

Ubi.4136:

As several have said, it is both space saving and a gold sink. The unidentified item could be basic garbage or a precursor…you won’t know until it’s ID’d. But, taking my example of over 5,000 hours played and no precursor, if I start ID’ing all that gear (hoping to finally get one), I just lose money, cause the items are barely worth more than the cost of ID’ing.

Here is something to note: it is silly for loot to be one way in the expansion and different in the core game. Which means, if this is the route they are going, they will be changing core Tyria’s loot to be on the same system. All of the named exotics will increase in price tenfold.

This is not even true, you will always net gain when id gears with high MF, rare drop is quite common not mentioning exotics.

Please link the stats that you draw this conclusion from. I haven’t seen any conclusive evidence for “you will always net gain”.

Have you even tried id them? rare droped 2/10 for me. Even if the rare rate is 1/30, you would never lose gold.

Rong.5470:

I bet there will be infinite UnID kit in itemshop.

that’s the most valid reason for introducing it. monitization.

warbignime.4610:

Djinn.9245:

warbignime.4610:

Ubi.4136:

As several have said, it is both space saving and a gold sink. The unidentified item could be basic garbage or a precursor…you won’t know until it’s ID’d. But, taking my example of over 5,000 hours played and no precursor, if I start ID’ing all that gear (hoping to finally get one), I just lose money, cause the items are barely worth more than the cost of ID’ing.

Here is something to note: it is silly for loot to be one way in the expansion and different in the core game. Which means, if this is the route they are going, they will be changing core Tyria’s loot to be on the same system. All of the named exotics will increase in price tenfold.

This is not even true, you will always net gain when id gears with high MF, rare drop is quite common not mentioning exotics.

Please link the stats that you draw this conclusion from. I haven’t seen any conclusive evidence for “you will always net gain”.

Have you even tried id them? rare droped 2/10 for me. Even if the rare rate is 1/30, you would never lose gold.

“Trying them” does not = evidence of “always” getting anything.

azizul.8469:

Rong.5470:

I bet there will be infinite UnID kit in itemshop.

that’s the most valid reason for introducing it. monitization.

The question isn’t why Anet is introducing UnID Gear. The question is what is the player losing as a result.

Djinn.9245:

azizul.8469:

Rong.5470:

I bet there will be infinite UnID kit in itemshop.

that’s the most valid reason for introducing it. monitization.

The question isn’t why Anet is introducing UnID Gear. The question is what is the player losing as a result.

Standard green and blue drops I guess? In HoT they were in championlike bags instead.

They are now partially hidden behind a choice of lower tier material through salvage or Identifying them with a cost to get the blue and greens and rares with an addition of unique skins that previously would be obtained through a currency grind.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Djinn.9245:

azizul.8469:

Rong.5470:

I bet there will be infinite UnID kit in itemshop.

that’s the most valid reason for introducing it. monitization.

The question isn’t why Anet is introducing UnID Gear. The question is what is the player losing as a result.

Standard green and blue drops I guess? In HoT they were in championlike bags instead.

They are now partially hidden behind a choice of lower tier material through salvage or Identifying them with a cost to get the blue and greens and rares with an addition of unique skins that previously would be obtained through a currency grind.

The problem is that you are guessing and so is everyone else. I want to know for certain what reward UnID Gear is replacing. If it is replacing standard drops, we all know that it is possible to get Rares, Exotics, and even Precursors in standard drops. Are we losing those possibilities? Are those possibilities being hidden behind the new ADDED steps of first completing a heart and then taking the time and $ to ID the gear?

If so, this is a terrible idea.

Well, I did get a couple of Rares just from regular loot drops, so I don’t think the UnID items are completely replacing any Rare/Exotic drops. Still, I got a lot more Rares from them.

I don’t think the Devs are going to give a specific answer on what’s in the loot tables, or what weight each category of items has, but….one never knows.

Good luck.

Djinn.9245:

FrizzFreston.5290:

Djinn.9245:

azizul.8469:

Rong.5470:

I bet there will be infinite UnID kit in itemshop.

that’s the most valid reason for introducing it. monitization.

The question isn’t why Anet is introducing UnID Gear. The question is what is the player losing as a result.

Standard green and blue drops I guess? In HoT they were in championlike bags instead.

They are now partially hidden behind a choice of lower tier material through salvage or Identifying them with a cost to get the blue and greens and rares with an addition of unique skins that previously would be obtained through a currency grind.

The problem is that you are guessing and so is everyone else. I want to know for certain what reward UnID Gear is replacing. If it is replacing standard drops, we all know that it is possible to get Rares, Exotics, and even Precursors in standard drops. Are we losing those possibilities? Are those possibilities being hidden behind the new ADDED steps of first completing a heart and then taking the time and $ to ID the gear?

If so, this is a terrible idea.

Yeah its sort of a guess/deduction. You get unidentified gear from chests and as an event reward. Just like bags and those things in HoT. They dont completely take over standard drops. They are just a lootbag you can also salvage and need to go to a heart vendor for.

Instead of doing hearts for currency and having currency merchants you just do hearts to open your regular lootbags.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Djinn.9245:

FrizzFreston.5290:

Djinn.9245:

azizul.8469:

Rong.5470:

I bet there will be infinite UnID kit in itemshop.

that’s the most valid reason for introducing it. monitization.

The question isn’t why Anet is introducing UnID Gear. The question is what is the player losing as a result.

Standard green and blue drops I guess? In HoT they were in championlike bags instead.

They are now partially hidden behind a choice of lower tier material through salvage or Identifying them with a cost to get the blue and greens and rares with an addition of unique skins that previously would be obtained through a currency grind.

The problem is that you are guessing and so is everyone else. I want to know for certain what reward UnID Gear is replacing. If it is replacing standard drops, we all know that it is possible to get Rares, Exotics, and even Precursors in standard drops. Are we losing those possibilities? Are those possibilities being hidden behind the new ADDED steps of first completing a heart and then taking the time and $ to ID the gear?

If so, this is a terrible idea.

Yeah its sort of a guess/deduction. You get unidentified gear from chests and as an event reward. Just like bags and those things in HoT. They dont completely take over standard drops. They are just a lootbag you can also salvage and need to go to a heart vendor for.

Instead of doing hearts for currency and having currency merchants you just do hearts to open your regular lootbags.

Loot containers in HoT often contain rares for me. I also just recently got a Ascended Chest from a bag. So until I know exactly what I’m losing by getting UnID gear. I’m going to say it’s bad.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I don’t think the Devs are going to give a specific answer on what’s in the loot tables, or what weight each category of items has, but….one never knows.

I’m not asking for that level of detail. Something like “Unidentified Gear replaces the first green drop you get from X” or whatever. But I’m certain you are correct that Anet is not going to give that info. In the absence of which I am forced to conclude that UnID Gear is bad.